I have been working at Gerson Lehrman Group full-time (More than 3 years)

Pros

Look, everyone at GLG knows about the Glassdoor reviews, and everyone's known a disgruntled employee who left on poor terms and contributed a scathing criticism. A lot of the criticism is a natural side effect of GLG's target demographic: 23 year olds from rich parents & pedigree who have no prior work experience. To be fair, GLG has historically done a bad job at accurately marketing the role, which has led to the wrong people in the wrong positions. However, a lot of the criticisms posted here (including those written by people I know) essentially boil down to, "I'm very upset that I have a manager who's allowed to make demands on my time and hold me accountable when I underperform."

To anyone considering working here, I'd advise you to take the reviews of more junior employees (<1 year) with a grain of salt. There's a reason the company's retention rate is higher for those who come to GLG with prior work experience.

Anyway, here's what the past few years with GLG have taught me: It's not a perfect company, but it's not a bad job. GLG offers a nice working space, competitive benefits, competitive (if not inflated) salary, and an accelerated track for people & account management. Within 2-3 years, employees can expect to be managing a small team, with another 2-3 years putting you on track to manage several teams and manage huge portions of your division's accounts. While the skills you're learning are mostly qualitative (professional communication, negotiation, time management, people management), these play nicely into a resume for future management roles.

Working in the Research segment is an on-call role, and nights and weekends are frequently interrupted by client demand, but the company pays well for your time. For some people, the trade-off isn't worth it, so think critically about the value you place on leaving at 5pm + not replying to emails on weekends.

There are some excellent people at GLG who love their jobs, and I've been lucky enough to work for/with them. My days are busy and work always bleeds over into the next day, but I'm in constant dialogue with people around me about their weekends, pets, bad dates, and newest Netflix binges. When I joined the company, we sat in cubicles and no one spoke to each other in a cramped office with no perks. Now, I have a beautiful view of downtown, a free coffee bar, and healthy work friends. The management is getting better, and the work hours are getting better as accounts are finally staffed appropriately. There have been rocky periods, but overall I think the company is becoming a better place to work. I don't do the work out of passion, but that's the reality of most jobs. Work hard, network well, and the company will continue to pay you more than most of your peers with the same skill set at other firms.

Cons

My experience isn't universal, and there are some truly, TRULY terrible managers at GLG. These are the bad apples who don't let their employees take lunch, sick days, or vacation. (By the way, GLG -- your "no minimum vacation" policy is actively harmful when it means some employees take 30+ vacation days annually and other employees take 0, with NO ACCOUNTABILITY to the managers allowing this.) This isn't unique to GLG, but it is something the company must continue to work on if it intends to retain talent and improve these mixed Glassdoor reviews. There's a decent amount of flexibility to transfer to new teams IF the company thinks you're going to stick it out another 1-2 years, but I'm sympathetic for those who have tried to escape awful managers and been denied.

Likewise, there are teams that are overstaffed and consistently blow past arbitrarily set goals despite leaving at 4pm every day, and teams that are understaffed, overworked, and penalized when they fall short of unreasonably high targets. The divide breeds resentment, and the aggressive growth rate isn't sustainable for all clients. GLG could attempt to solve for this (and overall work/life balance) with a queue system for new requests and follow-the-sun staffing, but still has far too much pride in how their elite clients value the account managers. It's not true, employees know it isn't true, but the antiquated idea persists. I'm hopeful it will change in the next 3-5 years.

GLG's technology is abhorrently dysfunctional and frequently causes huge losses and mass employee frustration & panic. It's not uncommon for all systems to shut down, and new programs to be rolled out before being properly beta-tested. Compensation is directly tied to metrics, but those metrics can be hard to find and riddled with errors in the reporting. Employees spend countless hours building complicated Excel sheets to manage the most basic client data so we can have some hope of getting accurate numbers. There's a rumor that the CTO hired a team of his dev buddies to run things, and I have no idea if that's true, but it's the most plausible explanation for how terrible our systems are. Guys, I'm trying my very best here, but you've got to give us some better tools to work with.

Lastly, GLG definitely has a diversity problem. The straight white Ivy frat boys who keep getting hired don't even like the job, because all of their buddies went directly to Wall Street or sexy marketing roles and are making better money. As long as the recruitment strategy continues to target top tier schools and rely heavily on referrals, this won't change. GLG just hired an experienced CHRO, so my hopes are up about the future of the gender/race demographics in the office, but this is a serious issue that's remaining solidly in the con category for now.

Advice to Management

Invest in technology, for the love of god please invest in technology and bring in a third party to audit literally everyone in IT. Please. (Don't dox me, I'm just the messenger.)

360 REVIEWS. Was this just a rumor in 2016? If I post about it on Glassdoor, will someone remember that it's a phenomenal idea?

GLG has an inflated sense of itself and is convinced that only Northeast college talent can comprehend what it does, but anyone with strong written/verbal communication and time management skills should be able to perform decently in the role, expensive college degree or not. Stop recruiting from ivys, and start going to state schools (or even 2-year degrees for highly administrative roles, like ROps). And has the referral campaign really been going that well?

Kill the culture of being "on the desk" at all times, at all costs. HR makes us sign a document saying we're entitled to a 1-hour break every 5 hours, but no one has the freedom to take it. That's lip-service, folks!

If 2+ employees say someone is a bad manager, take them seriously, no matter how good of an individual contributor that person is.

I hear a minimum vacation policy is coming, and if so: enforce it. Follow up with managers whose people aren't taking days off.

Thanks so much for your review. Like I’ve said in several of my responses, I read all the Glassdoor reviews and many come up in conversations with the management team (many of whom are avid readers , as well.) This type of review – thoughtful with actionable suggestions – is the type that’s most helpful to me as I continue to consider and implement new HR policies to make this a great place to work. I assure you that what you’ve heard, as it relates to changes – from diversity initiatives to more robust performance reviews – isn’t lip service. We’re making changes, we’re listening to you, and my door is always open to your constructive ideas.... MoreLess

Overall GLG is a pretty nice place to work. I think a lot of the bad reviews have to do with certain bad managers and while you can blame the company for that, I would take those reviews with a grain of salt.

As a whole, here are the pros:

Great people.Flexible work environment if you are paired with the right manager. (Not everyone has this luxury.)Beautiful office space.Good benefits.Fast opportunity for growth if you prove yourself, whether it be promotions or opportunity to move to a different department or city.

Cons

Diversity! GLG is a company ran by priveleged white males who for a long time did not realize the need for diversity in the company’s management or even their associates. It is alarming and makes you wonder, how skewed is your view of the world if you live and work in New York City but do not hire diversely? How many lacrosse players from an ivy school can you hire? Think about it.

The great solution to this issue is that management has hired a very smart and seasoned head of HR who has great experience and happens to be a woman. I hope she can fix this and I think she will, so there is some glimpse of this changing over time.

Departments are not collaborative and feel like different mini companies within a large conglomerate. It would be great to know what people are working on and understand the different groups within GLG a little better.

Advice to Management

Fix your diversity issue. Stop hiring your fraternity brothers! We will never advance in the ways you want us to if all of the perspective comes from one place. You know this, but why did it take so long for you to notice? Hurry and hire diverse candidates!

Give people more opportunities to learn about other departments. Galaxy is a great start but give us more information to work with.

Thanks for your review (and for your compliment). Like you, I’m optimistic about GLG’s future. Eight months in, I’m so inspired by the great people I’ve met. I’m also excited about many of the issues you’ve raised – increasing collaboration, evolving our hiring practices, and creating a more diverse workplace. Galaxy – our company intranet – is just the start, and there’s much more to come.... MoreLess

The employee experience at GLG is incredibly dependent on the team. Some teams are highly autonomous & unstructured, others have rigid guidelines around responsibilities and expectations. GLG has a lot of really smart people - a key to being happy at the company is finding places where you can work with these people and stretch outside of your daily responsibilities. It's a company that rewards initiative, and promotes fairly quickly if you have earned it. GLG is also flexible - after you've proven yourself, if you say you want to: move to another office, focus on a different task, join a different client segment, etc. - that's all totally possible.

Cons

There's a lack of excitement about working at GLG. The office is nice, the people are smart, but I'm not sure anyone is truly passionate about being there.

Advice to Management

Find a way to nurture/reward individual contributors other than promotions. There seems to be a lack of people who truly kick a** at service/sales and stay doing that for more than ~18 mos. The company needs to create a culture that is truly passionate about service - right now people view serving clients begrudgingly, something that's necessary but not exciting.

Also - GET MORE DIVERSE. For a company that's relatively young and values "perspective" - it's discouraging to see so few faces in senior positions that aren't white and male.

Also pt. 2 - get rid of the noncompete. It's cowardly and unnecessary contributes to a culture of employees vs. management.

Your review’s headline really jumped out at me because I couldn’t agree more. I’ve worked for a number of companies in an array of roles and I know that work is what you make of it. I’m glad you’re having a good experience, and I appreciate your call out of how much opportunity there is at GLG. The senior leadership team is focused on providing good experiences to everyone who works here. Like I’ve said in other responses, the areas you’ve flagged for improvement – like career paths and GLG’s diversity – are top priorities for me and other senior leaders. Thank you.... MoreLess

I am learning a lot about the business world and how it functions--something that I had zero experience with or knowledge of having graduated from a liberal arts college with a traditional academic major. Learning a ton about different industries, supply chains, and how roles in different companies work.

This job is communication and organization boot camp. I'm learning to function at a level that blows my mind, and I graduated in the top 2% of my elite liberal arts college with multiple extracurriculars and a thriving social life (read: I thought I was pretty good at time management before GLG). This is a great job for learning how to have a job--being professional, collaborative, and on top of every detail at all times.

I have an incredible manager. (It seems to me that about half of the managers are good at GLG, the other half are just great individual contributors who are thrown into mgmt roles because of their high metrics). I've worked at GLG for less than a year and have continued learning at an exponential rate, which I believe is 90% attributable to my manager. We recently switched teams around and I requested to stay under her, which upper management honored. Good thing they did, because I'm not sure how likely I'd be to stay on under someone else. I feel as though she is the biggest pro for me at GLG at this point--I want to stay and learn from her until she leaves (or until 2-3 years go by) and then I'm gone too.

Cons

The work-life balance is absolutely horrendous. First 6 months you are limited to 5 hours of overtime a week. I often had to lie about how much I had gotten done at work so I wouldn't go over the limit. When things got desperate metrics-wise, I grit my teeth and worked from home to avoid the consequences of not hitting my numbers. Since my recent promotion (no more overtime limits, you need to work when clients need you) it has gotten so much worse. Worked a 10 hour day on MLK day after being told I was "skeleton crew," which I expected to mean I was just needed to take care of urgent stuff/email clients back.

Emphasis is on speed at GLG. If you aren't the type of person who likes to bang out mediocre work and be done with it, this is not the place for you. Be prepared to be forced to give about 60% effort on 8 projects at once instead of 100% effort on 4. This is probably the part about this job I hate the most.

You are evaluated on cold hard numbers, nothing else. I hate this. In a meeting where I received negative feedback from my manager and her manager, I was told that the promotion process was "holistic" and that there were some soft skills I needed to improve in order to be promoted. Together with my manager I worked hard to implement their feedback. Two months later when the promotion process came around, there was NO OPTION for me to present qualitative reasons why I deserved to be promoted. There was a section where you could write comments and were limited to 500 characters. I was able to write 3 sentences. I spoke to both my manager and her manager inquiring how qualitative elements were going to be considered given that there was no place for them on the self evaluation form. They both told me not to worry about it. In the end I was promoted. Pretty sure there is zero qualitative consideration when they decide who to promote given that half or even more than half of the managers in this company are completely awful and have no idea how to manage another person let alone a team or a unit. Really hard to care about "doing well" here when you know that evaluation process is such trash and that if your numbers drop or your manager doesn't like you you'll have absolutely zero ability to give context when promotion periods come around.

Lastly, but probably most importantly, there is ZERO diversity at GLG. I can count one hand and still have a couple of fingers left the number of non-white people I see regularly. Honestly, it's depressing.

Advice to Management

One of the things GLG claims to focus on is talent. GLG is also hemorrhaging talent for many reasons, but I think the biggest one is management. If 3 people in a row have requested a different manager, there's no excuse for that person to continue to be managing people. People who are good individual contributors are not necessarily going to be good managers. A lot of time they are awful managers because the qualities that make a good individual contributor at GLG are completely different than the qualities that make a good manager.

Thanks for sharing this feedback. We have been consistently investing in a lot of the areas you flagged as needing work, including better training for managers and improving our internal communication. Our compensation is competitive, but we continue to review our comp philosophy so we can keep it that way. I appreciate your candid suggestions in the “advice to management” section. We never want anyone to feel undervalued, and I hope when that’s the case you feel comfortable speaking to your manager or team leader. If you don’t, talk to me. Please know that feedback of all kinds is appreciated and considered.... MoreLess

Unskilled managers who foster a negative and unproductive working environment for their workers. The company coaches its employees to focus on the paycheck since the job is so mindless, resulting in managers who only care to bring home their check.

GLG has a few perks going for it:-Compensation: GLG pays fairly well considering that most hires are liberal arts majors.-Free coffee bar, snacks and food in the office occasionally.-The job gets you to Austin, which is an amazing city for young professionals with tons of opportunity.-Interesting and intelligent coworkers

Cons

GLG is a toxic workplace, with terrible management and an upside-down business model. For any ambitious, driven, intelligent, hardworking and independent people, this company will be your kryptonite. A few points that I observed/dealt with during my 3+ year tenure with the company.

Not a Performance Based Culture: No matter what management pretends to tell you, performance and talent are in no way linked to who gets promoted, who gets the biggest bonuses, etc. Promotions are given to tenured employees who are low/average performers who do not get burned out. The top performing employees and driven professionals quickly burn out, leave for new jobs within 1-2 years, or leave for grad school. The ones who stick around are the average performers who “drink the kool-aid”. Despite being a high performer, I was legitimately told by several people at the TL, VP and SVP level to “drink the kool-aid” if I wanted to progress and get promoted. They want people who follow orders rather than ask questions. Quickly touching on compensation, bonuses were cut smaller and smaller every year I was at GLG. Senior managers gobbled up the financial gains while over-working the revenue generating associates. It’s no wonder employee turnover exceeds 30%+.

Terrible Management and Business Model: Nearly all of the revenue generated at GLG is by the new associates (0-2 years tenure). Once you get to the Team Leader level, you stop taking any client work and start “managing” a team of people. Managing has become a 1984esque structure where e-mail time stamps are tracked (i.e., being scolded for not responding to a Sunday client e-mail over a holiday weekend, etc), managers can send pop-ups to your screen to make you complete tasks immediately, and every possible metric that can be tracked on employees is viewed by 2-3 levels of managers above you. Meanwhile, TLs and above have no client responsibilities so they do not have to work late into evenings, on weekends, and operate under 30+ metrics every time they open their computers. Changes are terribly communicated to new hires, and almost always increase micromanagement and automation (i.e templates to e-mail clients rather than human responses, checking boxes when setting up projects rather than creative brainstorming)

Council Member Management: One of the most disheartening things to see during my time at the company was how it treats its 'Council Members', or the primary product, the network of expert consultants. New employees are required to bring in dozens of high caliber, successful business experts to our network. Once brought in, GLG treats the experts like absolute garbage. For example, a switch to only paying them in gift cards rather than cash. Inaccurate 'rate setting' polices to undercut their hourly rate, systems that encourage/force employees to call/email professionals 10-15 times a day about 'urgent' client work, and rolling out tech buttons to deceive them to consult free of charge, lower rate and any other cost cutting mechanism you can image. At the rate this is going, I doubt GLG will be able to keep/retain experts based on how poorly they are treated and how much of a hassle it becomes.

HR Policies: Unlimited vacation policy is a scam, new associates are inadvertently told not to take any time off in order to hit impossibly high targets, while senior managers are known to take month+ long vacations. The company boasts “an average of 15 days off per employee”, do the math.

Decent compensation even though jr. associates come in with little to no experience. Ability to talk to clients pretty early on. Company is getting *better* about sharing high-level goals and strategies.

Cons

Where to begin?

First, culture is awful. GLG likes to higher overachievers without professional experience. They like young people who will kill themselves for the first two years to satisfy the clients. This has created a culture of year-long grinding, constant churn-n-burn. That's why there is a huge exodus every Feb. People get their paltry bonus and then they head for the door. People love to talk about 'work-life' balance, but it's virtue signalling. They know its important to employees, but you won't sniff it for the first year.

Second, management is uninspiring. All the talented people leave the company very quickly. The people that are left behind have no leadership skills, but get promoted through attrition. Their only skill seems to be taking credit for the work of the associates, but they're quick to throw you under the bus. Seriously - there is nothing worse than working under a micromanaging, incompetent 25-yr old.

Third, and I can't stress this enough, the work is awful. Once you get past the canned, glib description of GLG as 'transforming the way top leaders professionals learn, blah blah blah' the company is, at its best, a call shop. Your client gives you a list of questions they need answered; you search LinkedIn to find someone who can answer the questions; then you schedule a phone consultation. People like to act like their projects cover a wide breadth of topics and practice areas: but ask what they actually do. It's the same, menial task performed over and over and over again. The saddest part is not that you're bored - it's that the company doesn't invest in YOU. You will not develop any marketable skills (unless you count 'communication') and you won't walk away with any type of expertise or professional skills. There are a few people that "get out" and manage to find a better position in a different market. But most people walk away from GLG upset and with few prospects.

Chances are you didn't work hard and go to school to schedule phone calls. So, before you get sucked into this circus, ask your interviewer some hard questions. What is the most exciting project and least exciting project they've worked on? How do their projects or responsibilities chance across topics or practice areas? (They don't). How has GLG invested in them, what specific & tangible skills have they developed, and how does GLG position their employees for post-GLG success? Ask them what metrics they are responsible for - and how many hours they work to hit these targets? How often does they work past 5:30pm, or on evenings or weekends? (it's A LOT). How do the job responsibilities change after the first 6-month, 12-months, and 18-months? Have they felt disrespected by clients or council member? By management?

Advice to Management

None. You guys are bad leaders and worse mentors. You are the reason why so many younger people hate corporate america.

I’m sorry that you had a bad experience at GLG. Among many factors, we consider Glassdoor reviews as well as our internal survey to determine where we need to implement practices that make positive change. Glassdoor reviews are most helpful when they provide actionable suggestions or specifics on what isn’t working. While I know we have some work to do, I don’t think the culture here is broken. There is a lot to be excited about; we’re increasing our investment in our people every day. I hope you shared your specific feedback with your manager or a senior leader (either while you were here or during the exit interview process). When people are unhappy in their role or with their manager, it affects their experience of a workplace and the culture. We are now making changes that will give us an opportunity to address some of these issues.... MoreLess

Worked at GLG for nearly 2 years, coffee and office is nice. Austin is a great city. They try to make the mundane, high-stress work and culture better with food and bevs about once a week.

Cons

Where should I start?

1.) The work is not stimulating, you don't learn anything, it's very administrative. The title and the department has "Research" in the name but you are not doing ANY research here. They are trying to move away from the research title now but don't think you'll be using any type of quantitative skills or completing multi-day research projects. If you liked research in school or like to work on things over an extended period of time steer clear.

2.) The sales culture here is awful and borderline unethical. You will be asked to sell and upsell phone calls and other research anywhere you can. You will call analysts and try to sell them meetings they don't need and they don't know how much they cost. I genuinely don't believe GLG's clients understand the massive amount of money they pay for the services and GLG won't go out of their way to tell them. The company just views clients as deep pockets.

3.) Management is some of the worst in the country for a company of this size. There are two types of people that work there. The ones who hate working there and are looking for a way out (probably about half the company), and the ones that are strong individual contributors and develop and "I'm better than you attitude" (The other half of the company). You have managers with no experience outside of college that worked their way up by doing meaningless work with a healthy amount of brown nosing. Because of this you won't find any mentors with substance here or anyone with connections to help you in the future.

4.) Working culture is just as bad as sales culture. Very, very few people actually care about the work they do here. Instead they care about getting ahead and working their way to the next rung in the ladder. This fosters a very poor culture of day-to-day distaste in the work while the ones that are there for the long-haul are only there for the position of "leadership" and power. GLG brands itself as a learning company but none of their employees actually learn, pretty ironic.

5.) Work life balance is non existent. You receive about 400+ emails a day that you're expected to respond to within about 10 minutes. If you're not at your desk at any point in the day upper management starts to suspect you're slipping and will put you on a leash. People brag about answering emails at 1am and nobody can go to a meeting without checking their phone or laptop every 30 seconds.

Advice to Management

- Please be honest with your employees when you hire them.- Make efforts to change the churn and burn culture, hire management with real experience.- A little integrity in sales practices and incentive for employees to sell other than just reprimanding when you're not selling.- Find ways to make the job more interesting to the demographic you've hired - bright young grads.

Company Updates

GLG is excited to launch our latest video series: Anatomy of a Decision. Each video features industry leaders discussing his or her process for high-stakes decision-making. WATCH: http://glassdoor.com/slink.htm?key=vQ5qx

GLG is excited to launch our latest video series: Anatomy of a Decision. Each video features industry leaders discussing his or her process for high-stakes decision-making. WATCH: http://glassdoor.com/slink.htm?key=vQ5qr

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